Robots typically have an active work or operational process associated therewith. For example, an active work associated with a robot can be the operation of picking a part from a moving conveyor and placing the part on another moving conveyor. In certain applications, the part comes from a “production machine”. For example, the robots may pick cup cakes coming out of an oven on a moving conveyor, wherein the production machine is the oven.
As a further example, the robots may place or drop sliced bread on a conveyor that takes them to a wrapper, wherein the production machine is the wrapper.
The part or parts move along a conveyor from one conveyor station to the next conveyor station along a conveyor flow path. In the typical application in the industry, the robots pick the parts from one conveyor and drop the parts to another conveyor.
However, during a process, a “state change” may occur. For example, when one of the production machines (e.g. oven) becomes non-operational, the robots must switch to picking parts (e.g. cupcakes) from another conveyor that is fed with an operational production machine (e.g. oven).
Shortcomings of prior art:                1) There is no automatic switching to alternate conveyors when the operational state changes;        2) switching to alternate conveyors requires manual intervention to switch the robots; and        3) conventional switching methods cause significant production down-time.        